Professional Aerial Photography
As flitetest have discussed before in the US your not allowed to earn money using UAV/Multirotors for aerial video & aerial photography. In the UK we don't have have this problem, but the Civil Aviation Authority have put rules in the way to be able to do it legally
To do it in the uk you need to have an RPQ which is a remote pilots qualifiation and is a 3 day course you have to take which is £1500 once you have that you have to apply for premision to fly from the CAA and then they still might not let you fly.
So taking all that into account I decided to start my own company called G Aviation and do aerial photography professionally, I’ve have no photography experience what so ever accept for what photo’s taken on my Iphone. I’ve been flying RC models for the last 10 years, only multirotors in the last year.
So what I did was get on young business scheme and got a business loan for £7,300 which most I have spent. If your considering doing this I would recommend no less than £5,000 to do aerial photography professionally and to get the right kit!
I also built my own FPV ground station with a TV monitor to work with the new DJI light bridge which I have pre ordered but not recieved yet.
I also got a Macbook pro with Final cut Pro & apature installed (I would highly reccomend this as its great for editing and is so easy) to do the picture and video editing and here are some photo's I've taken and edited so far.
This is what I've got so far, Due to attend RPQ course next week and have some payed jobs lined up aswell I shall post more in the future.
Total spent:
UAV : £2000
DJI LIght bridge: £1000
Mac: £1800
Course: £1500
UAV insuance: £500
Extra's: £200
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Good luck with your business! Wish we could do that here in America.
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We have a similar situation here in Australia whereby you can attend a course to get your RPAS accreditation. You then have to apply to CASA for licensing to be a commercial UAV pilot and then again for a Chief Pilot operating certificate if you want to run a business.
Sadly, when all this was set up it was done so in conjunction with the companies that run the training. They, along with CASA setup the rules so that to fly my 1100g foam wing I have to undertake the same training and scrutiny as if I wanted to fly a ScanEagle or Predator drone.
It appears that both CASA and the training organisations saw this as a way to firstly lock out the little guy, and secondly print money. This means it is going to cost me in the region of $15,000 to "maybe" get a license - that's before I even look at any kit or insurance etc.
There was talk last year of CASA bringing in weight based class registration for UAVs. In this way, if you wanted to fly something under 2KG it would simply be a case of applying online. If you wanted to fly a 250KG monster you would be treated as if it were a full-size aircraft. Of course this makes perfect sense and as such has been hastily buried under red-tape by the CASA "advisors" (read "training companies").
I'm not even going to get started on the UAV manufacturers that are charging $40K a go for an OEM operator's certificate...
...right, getting down from soapbox and off to play with my APM :-)
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